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Saturday, March 24, 2012

Yes, you read that right. Everyone who left a comment during the Blog Hop Party wins a copy of the pattern they chose. Why you ask?

Well, it's been a very lucky week for me so I have decided to pay it forward. Let me explain. The Blog Hop Party began on St. Patrick's Day and I am part Irish on my father's side. I guess I had the luck of the Irish with me that day because we received an offer on our house that has been for sale for around 3 years. The luck has continued when we flew to Denver yesterday to visit my husband's daughter on our way to California to go on a cruise in celebration of our 5th wedding anniversary. My husband's calling it our "nickel" anniversary. Our flight to Denver not only left on time but arrived 45 minutes early! That's gotta be luck. Now, today we found out that the inspections on our house are good so we just have to have an appraisal to make the sale final. Very good news that will make our anniversary cruise an extra special celebration and alot more relaxing.

I am overwhelmed by all the comments that were left on my blog during the Blog Hop Party and all the new followers that signed up. Thanks to all of you. I will be sending an email to each of you with the pattern you chose attached as a pdf file. It will take awhile to send out 135 patterns but I plan to have that finished before we leave on our cruise on Monday morning so be patient. Please let me know if you have any problems with the attachment but realize that I may not be able to get back to you until April 1st after the cruise as I may not have any internet access.

Friday, March 16, 2012

My Ribbonry quilt is complete. Woo hoo!! I finally figured out a very quick and easy way to make this quilt using nickel nine patch quilt blocks and I have written a pattern for it too. Keep reading to see how you can win one! The nickel nine patch block is simply a block made from nine 5" squares of fabric and is the basic block in several of my patterns including two FREE patterns that are posted here.

I even quilted this one myself! I used irregular lines of quilting across the width of the quilt. It actually turned out exactly like I planned. I also pieced the batting. It was way easier than I could ever imagine. I just butted edges together that I could tell had not been cut and used a wide zigzag stitch to sew them together. Very easy and thrifty! I have so many scraps of batting from all those quilts I made last year and I need to use them.

Those of you who are familiar with this blog may remember voting for which quilt I should make next during the last Blog Hop Party in December.

and my Ribbonryquilt is the final product just in time for the next Blog Hop Party hosted by Quilting Gallery. Starting Saturday, March 17th, you can join in on the fun. There will be lots of sites to visit and each one will be having a give-away! Please tell all your friends too.

For my Give-Away, I'll be giving away 5 FREE patterns ofRibbonry and 5 FREE patterns of Triangle Confusion, another recently released pattern. To be entered in the drawing, leave a comment on this post telling me which pattern you would like to have. Make sure I have an email address for you so I can send you a pattern if you are chosen. All winners will be chosen at random on March 24th after the hop ends on the 23rd.

After making thismini quilt, I realized I could make the area I have circled below better. I'm not crazy about all those seams in that area so I eliminated them and wrote a tutorial which is posted below the photo.

How to make a scrappyDutch Rosequilt block from 5" squares of fabric (known as nickel or charm squares) tutorial

Scrappy Nickel Dutch Rose quilt block

1. You will need the following fabrics for 1 quilt block:

1 3/4" "bonus" blocks

2. I used the method shown below for all half square triangle blocks and corners. Draw a line diagonally from corner to corner on the wrong side of one of the squares and draw a second line 1/2" away. Place 2 squares right sides together and sew on both lines. Cut between the sewn lines and you end up with a 1 3/4" half square triangle block from each corner as a bonus block that can be used for another project.
If you don't want the extra block, don't draw or sew on the second line. Just trim 1/4" from the corner to corner diagonal line after sewing on it to complete your block. Make 8 blocks like this.

3. To make the block in the center of each side, follow the steps shown below to make 4 units.

4. To make the points of the center star block, follow these steps and make 4:

5. Sew the 2 units together as shown using a 1/4" seam allowance.

6. To make the corner block, follow the same basic steps as before as shown below. The four intersecting seams circled above have been eliminated!

7. To finish the corner blocks, add your corners, 2 background blocks and 2 half square triangle blocks as shown. All four corners are made the same.

Friday, March 9, 2012

The Quilting Gallery has a weekly quilt contest where you can submit a quilt you have made and win a prize. The theme for this week's contest is Scrappy Triangles and I have entered my Triangle Confusion quilt. Voting begins on Friday. Be sure to check out the site and vote for your favorite quilt.

Monday, March 5, 2012

This mini quilt is just 16" square, perfect for a table topper or wall quilt. ﻿This mini quilt is my interpretation of the traditional Dutch Rose quilt block.

Mymini quilt as a table topper

My mini quilt is made from nickel (5") charm squares since using nickels is what this blog is all about. I started a tutorial for this block but as I looked at the finished block, I saw another way to construct it that I think will be faster and easier. I will post the tutorial soon. The fabric I used is from the Fresh Mixerz collection by Jan Mullen. I love this fabric line and am finally using it! I am using it in my Ribbonry quilt also which is nearing completion and turning out better than I imagined. Here's the final design for Ribbonry-